Our Travel Themed Wedding

I had never been one for the whole ‘girliness’ of a wedding, so rather than do what was expected, I scrapped everything and done it in a way that stayed true to who I am. I’m proud of our story, the fact that we haven’t let the 4000 miles that separate us, get between us, so I almost wanted our wedding to be a celebration of that because it is such a HUGE part of our relationship. So here’s how we created our multi-national travel themed wedding.

The Invitations

I was pretty lucky that I was able to save a lot of money on custom invitations because I know my way around Photoshop, so I found a template on Google and created Boarding Cards. I even included a scanned image of our real passport stamps from when we entered Jamaica!

The Colour Theme

The Groomsmen wore Green, Black & Yellow – The colour theme evolved over the planning stages. Jesse had wanted metallic green (the colour ‘of the new Chevy’ car!!) waistcoats/vests with black suits, then when it came to ‘flower’ colours yellow was chosen because together, the 3 colours represents the Jamaica flag, the place where we met!

Groomsmen Boutonnieres made from guitar picks to represent our love of music!

I even let Jesse loose on the backs of the vests with his air brush…he painted each one with a different texture (chequer plate, rat rod aka rust, metal work and wood grain), just another way we let our personality show in our wedding.

Reception Decorations

The UK and USA flags were the main decoration focus for the reception. These were used as centre pieces on the tables, instead of flowers. The Top Table had an arrangement I had found on Ebay which had the two flags of our nationalities AND the Jamaica flag, which was perfect!

The Guest tables had the UK and USA flags placed in a Red Stripe Jamaican Beer bottle along with two little green paper planes. Red Stripe was the beer we were both drinking when we met! The tables also had names of places we had been together. I called the Top Table ‘the Maldives’ as that’s where we were going for our Honeymoon so it kinda represented our near future! I also bought a combined UK and USA flag that we used during our photos (see below), that we then got our guests to sign in the evening!

For want of a better word, I wanted to prove that me and Jesse have had a normal relationship, some of the guests had only spoken to Jesse through video chat and others hadn’t met him at all before our wedding day! So I used the seating plan board as a way to display silly photos we’ve taken together while visiting each other and from when we met, to show just how hard we’ve both worked to make our relationship a success! The board also had an outline of Jamaica, the UK and the States and a text box saying:

Love is…

Taking 22 flights

Spending 129+ hours in the sky

Travelling more than 64000 miles, backwards & forwards across 6 times zones…

Just to be able to spend a weekend together

Distance means so little, when someone means so much

Seating Plan

The Cake!

We went for the combination of a large Top Cake and then chocolate Guinness flavour cupcakes just to make up the numbers. The Chocolate Guinness cupcakes were easy to turn ‘travel’, they had rice paper UK flags and USA flags on the tops. The inside of the Top Cake, I had a little surprise, even Jesse didn’t know until it was cut. It was an American flag! Based on Betty Crocker recipe (found HERE). We simplified the original by just using food colour in a plain sponge mix and adding more, thinner layers to make the 13 stripes that make up the USA flag!

Stephanie Humphries Photography

Our Guestbook

My FAVOURITE ‘decoration’ was our guestbook. I didn’t want a normal book (I plan on binding the cards together to create a bit of a make-shift book), I wanted something that’d be easy to transport back to the States and something I could frame and put on a wall. So again, sticking to the travel theme, I played on the fact that every time we fly to visit each other, we have our finger prints taken at the airport, so we made every guest turn their thumb print into a little cartoon character doodle!

The result was AWESOME and our guests enjoyed doing it!

The Food

I wanted something typically English as Jesse had said he wanted the wedding in the UK, so we had a Roast Dinner and in the evening we had a buffet of Scones with cream and jam!

Please note that I found some of these ideas on Pinterest and Google and adapted them to suit my situation. I am not claiming that I ‘invented’ them, this blog is purely to show all the ideas I combined to make our day perfect 🙂 If it was your idea originally, I thank you!

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7 thoughts on “Our Travel Themed Wedding”

You’re wedding looks like it was a lot of fun and kudos for you to not sticking to the traditional “how a wedding should be”theme. Weddings are so much better when you make the theme what you are genuinely interested rather than the expect norm!

Your story from the start when Jesse proposed made me cry as it was just such a beautiful moment. From every step you can see the love in your eyes. What a celebration and joy it will be when you are reunited together forever, that’s what I’m looking forward. Love your blog love u out guys xx

I have to admit to some very unBritish gulping reading this, what a great wedding. I love all you personal touches about you as a couple. My sister made JT and myself a Union Jack reveal cake (a la British Bake off) but I love the Stars and Stripes version you did. Congratulations to you both!

Welcome to Between England and Iowa!

I’m Kylie and this is my Travel & Lifestyle blog! I’m a British girl, with an American husband, blogging about the USA visa process, expat life and active travel in the American Midwest and beyond! I went from living in a country with 5 weeks vacation time, to a country that doesn’t even have to give you 1 week. You CAN travel if you make it a priority and I’ll show you how!! If you have any questions or just want to say hi, feel free to contact me!

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